In Plain Sight
by MuchFailSauce
Summary: Hiruma has always been different, ever since he was born. But eventually he'll learn to be different in a team. No real plot, just a drabble about a demon. No pairings, rating for two uses of the F-word, brief talk of smoking and drinking. Feedback love.


**Disclaimer: I didn't come up with Hiruma. I don't know enough about football to come up with Eyeshield 21. So I have to settle for coming up with fanfiction instead.**

**Fandom: Eyeshield 21**

**Characters: Hiruma, and mentions of team members and his American buddies from the army base. Hiruma's mother purely from my imagination, Hiruma's father almost purely from my imagination.  
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**Warnings: Somebody had to teach Hiruma the F-word, and I figured it was almost certainly an American. So... Two instances of foul language. No pairings.  
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**Other: I was just looking at Hiruma the other day, and I thought: _Hey, when Hiruma was born, what the heck did the nurses and his parent think? A baby with sharp teeth, pointy ears, and slit pupils? Wow, that must've been weird... _From there, it just kind of spiraled out of control and turned into a history of Hiruma. :D Enjoy.  
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When the baby was finally born, it opened its eyes almost instantly, and one of the nurses fainted dead away in the room. Later, she would swear that she saw the devil looking back at her, but that was dismissed and, (unfortunately) not entered in the hospital records.

_Male child born to Mr. and Mrs. Hiruma._

_Eyes: Grey (_and, scribbled into the margin in pen_) __**slit pupils.**_

The boy didn't cry after he was first born. He just looked down at the nurse, being fanned by one of her co-workers, and laughed like it was the most hilarious thing he'd ever seen.

Hiruma Yoichi stayed in the hospital for four nights, and by the end of his stay there wasn't a single nurse who would willingly go into the newborn ward at night. If you even walked past that room (or so the untold tales said) you would hear four-day-old Hiruma Yoichi's quiet laughter, following you down the corridor.

_Child born with prematurely manifested canines. Canines show an unusual degree of length and sharpness, possibly indicating a deformity or mutation in the jaw..._

Hiruma Atsuko was a beautiful and determined woman, but she had always been a bit frail and her body wasn't up to the strain of bearing her son. She had four surgeries in the next five years after giving birth to Yoichi, her first and only child, and then passed away from a painful and bloody internal complication.

"_Yoichi. Bewitching one. Isn't that a beautiful name?"_

Yoichi came to her funeral, five years old and somber, the shock of black hair that hung in his face doing nothing to hide his slit-pupil eyes.

He stood still as stone while his mother slipped away from him, and everyone watching muttered later about that dry-eyed, stony-faced child who had killed his own mother just by being born.

He didn't even cry.

_Dear diary, _

_I have the strangest in my new daycare class. His father dropped him off, and paid us some really good money to take care of the kid all day-no way was I going to say no, the man was paying like a CEO or something. He told us the boy's mother is dead, and he doesn't have time to take care of him right now. Poor kid._

_Yoichi's always picking things up and looking at them and turning them over, like he's trying to take them apart with his brain and figure out what makes them tick. He doesn't cry, but the first day he came in his eyes were all red and he wouldn't talk to anyone..._

After five days of silent observation, Yoichi, the strange, silent, kid-in-the-corner, came over to his teacher and informed her that if _she _would give him fake, blank worksheets and always give him a sticker, _he_ wouldn't have to call her supervisors and tell them that her water bottle was full of strong American whiskey.

He got his worksheet reduction, and then he'd written a few words on a sheet of paper and stored it in his room. The very first page of the Devil's Notebook was buried under the boy's bed for more than three years, written in crayon on red construction paper, with a photo next to it as incriminating evidence (a photo that he'd taken from under a corner of his blanket during naptime, using a cell phone that he'd conned Hishima out of for the low price of 100 yen and not telling anyone about the other boy's bed-wetting problem).

_Mis Sadaka drincs whiskee._

_Hshima peed the bed._

Before the other kids started elementary school, they worried about making new friends.

Hiruma didn't.

Hiruma didn't need friends.

_"Hey kid, what the fuck is this?"_

_"Is that a football play? Stop cussing around the kid, Tom."_

_"Did you draw this?"_

_"Look, _'QB, Clarence'_! Of course it's football, moron."_

_"So what, he gonna make your plays for you now?"_

_"Maybe he is. Hey, kid, do you know any English...?"_

By the time he was nine, Yoichi knew all the Japanese his dictionary could teach him, and was working his way steadily through English in between extremely easy school worksheets and long, convoluted football strategies. He could drink without throwing up, smoke without coughing, and had figured out how to use both effectively as devices for opponent intimidation. He was spending whole stretches of nights in a hotel instead of with his father, and he was working on his strategy for fooling the barbershop ladies into bleaching his hair for him.

_"Two piercings on each side, all in one go? You sure, little man?"_

_"Course I am, or I wouldn't have asked you to, would I? Hurry up, Clarence."_

_"Okay, but this is gonna hurt."_

_"Whatever."_

_"Like the hair, by the way. Real _football_ of you."_

_"Just jam the fuckin' needle through and get it over with, will ya'?"_

_"Hey Tommy, watch your mouth! You're poisoning little guy's ears here!"_

Winning.

That was the important part. His father had always lost, but in Amefuto, winning was everything. It was more important than the money, more important even than being able to intimidate people.

And the only way to win was logic and long, careful planning.

Winning was—

"_Isn't American football fun?"_

"_No…It's _you guys_ who seem fun."_

Winning—

"_You believed Sena-kun could beat me. That was your fatal mistake."_

"_It's not a mistake. I'll win. I'll win against Yamato-kun."_

Winning…

"_You're the one who dragged us into American football. Don't go getting yourself crushed alone, because this time it's our turn. Even if we have to tie a rope around your neck, we'll drag you to the Christmas Bowl!"_

Win…

"_I'm not going anywhere. Please hold your leg still, Hiruma-san."_

…

"_We're not alone on the field anymore."_

When the boy finally grew up, that was the moment he opened his eyes. Later, someone might say they saw the devil in that pointed, grinning face, but this was dismissed as unimportant.

_Name: Hiruma Yoichi_

_Ambition: Play American football forever._

Ya-ha.

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**Not much else to say after that. Just that it's kind of a pity that It appears Hiruma only officially started the threat notebook _after_ he met Kurita. That made me sad when I found out. Reviews welcomed!**

** -FSA  
**


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